2022 Ibrahim Governance Forum – May 25, 2022
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to speak at the 2022 Governance Forum, hosted by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
The world is facing a dangerous period of overlapping crises – the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, debt, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Africa is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the overlapping crises. Vaccination rates in Sub-Saharan Africa are at around 14 percent as opposed to 57 percent globally. Many African countries are facing elevated debt levels and large debt service costs and are already at high risk of debt distress. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has decreased the supply of grains to many African countries and increased the price of fertilizer. This worsens food insecurity and increases social tensions.
The recent crises come on top of the dramatic impacts of climate change that have been felt across the African continent for some time. In Ethiopia, South Sudan and Madagascar, there were no rains for the past three years. In the Horn of Africa alone, twenty-five million people are facing the risk famine. The impact of drought on medium term growth is about 8 times higher in Africa than in other regions. Climate change could force up to 86 million Africans to migrate within their own countries by 2050.
Climate interventions and projects offer large global public good benefits, but many require substantial external funding as well as a comprehensive policy framework. The challenge is how to incentivize these activities. The World Bank has recently published a short note that lays out some of our ideas on this, and I encourage you to review it and give feedback.
Supporting countries as they adapt to climate change is a key part of our Climate Change Action Plan. We are committed to having a minimum of 50 percent of our climate finance be in adaptation, and many of our activities in Africa are geared toward building resilience and adapting to climate change.
In 2021, at the One Planet Summit, we committed $5.6 billion to support the Great Green Wall Initiative to improve natural resource management and help local communities generate income in the eleven countries that stretch from Mauritania to Djibouti. We’re already implementing projects totaling over $4 billion.
In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal, more than 2 million people have benefited from the Regional Sahel Pastoralism Support Project, which is being scaled up to enhance the adaptation strategies of pastoralists threatened by drought and conflict.
We are finalizing our new core diagnostic, Country Climate and Development Reports, or CCDRs for the G5 Sahel countries plus Ghana and Cameroon -- more CCDR reports will be coming on stream next year. This work will help countries prioritize their climate adaptation and mitigation actions to focus on achieving scale and impact in their interventions.
I would like to emphasize the importance of strong governance and sound institutions to confronting climate challenges in Africa, the area which is at the core of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s work.
To help, the global community will need to set the right governance and incentive structure for the energy transition. There are several big challenges on this front. For example, a country that wants to decommission a coal fired power plant faces a trade-off between accounting for those reductions either as part of its NDCs or selling those reductions as carbon credits to finance the closure. The need to finance the global public good conflicts with the process of setting ambitious targets. This is just one of the major challenges in financing global public goods.
Governments also need to enhance the efficiency, openness, and accountability of institutions in key sectors, like agriculture, energy, water, and forestry. Under IDA20, Governance and Institutions remains a key cross-cutting issue. It seeks to foster more inclusive governance by strengthening social accountability and citizen engagement.
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance is vital in understanding the overall trajectory of governance in Africa and informing decision-making processes, including in response to climate change.
We are now just six months away from COP27 in Egypt, which has been dubbed Africa’s COP.
Leading up to this COP, we must remember that building a more climate-resilient Africa does not mean slowing down development or the progress toward achieving SDG7.
On the contrary—climate action can stimulate economic growth and improve human health and wellbeing. Investment in resilient infrastructure also has great potential to deliver urban and rural development in power, sanitation, water, and safe transport.
Let me conclude with this observation: the depth of the ongoing crises makes clear that Africa needs much more clean energy. Natural gas will be an important transition fuel to reduce carbon-intensity. New investment in hydro and dam maintenance are important. Scaling up energy efficiency, including air conditioning, and making the grid investments needed to absorb renewables will be key steps.
These various steps will be essential in Africa’s transition from subsistence farming to productive economic activity in agriculture, services, industry, and public sectors. They are also a key building blocks for security and broad-based improvements in growth and living standards.
Thank you. I wish you all a productive Forum.
